{"id":654727,"date":"2026-10-23T09:34:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T09:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/654727\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T09:34:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T09:34:11","slug":"biermann-doc-film-on-german-political-singer-for-trump-era-viennale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/654727\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Biermann’ Doc Film on German Political Singer for Trump Era: Viennale"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBiermann, the new documentary film from Jens Meurer (An Impossible Project, Public Enemy, Seaside Special), is a portrait of the outspoken political singer-songwriter and poet Wolf Biermann<\/a>. Through the lens of his life, though, it also offers a cinematic reflection on the 20th-century history of Germany, Europe and the world. After all, Biermann has lived in five different versions of Germany.<\/p>\n

\n\tBorn in Hamburg in 1936, Biermann only met his father once \u2013 in prison before the Jewish communist was killed by the Nazis in Auschwitz. The doc shows how this experience gave Biermann his calling: to fight against injustice and for socialism. He moved to East Germany and made a name for himself as a critical and fearless voice in the GDR. To some, Biermann, who is still a close friend of Joan Baez\u2019s, was like an East German Bob Dylan. The GDR regime banned him, forcing him to perform for 12 years in his East Berlin living room. When he played a concert in Cologne, West Germany, in 1976 in front of 7,500 people, the regime banned Biermann again \u2013 this time from re-entering East Germany. That saw the political artist live in exile in West Germany until he could visit the Eastern part of Germany again after reunification.<\/p>\n

\n\tShot on 16mm film, Biermann follows the critical voice and father of 10 children as he narrates his David-versus-Goliath life, going through his everyday life, to performances and visiting to historic locations. It also features interviews with his contemporaries, including actor Armin Mueller-Stahl<\/a>, who lauds his fire of rebellion but also calls him a \u201cvisible egomaniac,\u201d and archive footage. <\/p>\n

\n\tBiermann screens at the 64th edition of the Viennale<\/a>, the Vienna film festival in Austria, which runs through Nov. 3, on Oct. 26 and Oct. 27, following its recent FilmFest Hamburg world premiere. Majestic Filmverleih will release the film in Germany, with Filmladen releasing it in Austria.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Instant Film, Zeitsprung Pictures, Clouds Hill and zero fiction production was written by Dirk K\u00e4mper, Meurer and Biermann\u2019s wife Pamela Biermann, who also appears in the film. Sebastian Ganschow and Bernd Fischer handled cinematography, with editing by Antje Lass, Zenon Kristen and Grete Jentzen.<\/p>\n

\n\tMeurer talked to THR about how Biermann\u2019s story relates to the Oscar-winning movie The Lives of Others, its timeliness in the age of Trump and why the songwriter\u2019s messages are universal.<\/p>\n

\n\tWolf Biermann<\/a> is well known in Germany, and his work is in German. But his story and work feel quite universal. What\u2019s your take?<\/p>\n

\n\tYes, there is even an obvious Biermann pitch for an international<\/a> audience, namely that the premise of The Lives of Others is based on his situation. It\u2019s not his story, but Biermann\u2019s apartment was the most observed apartment by the Stasi secret police in East Germany.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe original impetus for the film, to be honest, was to look at an incredible life story over a long German period. But as we got into the film, it became clearer and clearer that this is a film for today and about today. Biermann might turn 90 in two weeks, but he\u2019s speaking to us very much also about the situation today. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Biermann\u2019 <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Majestic\/Sebastian Ganschow\/Bernd Fischer<\/p>\n

\n\tI firmly believe this isn\u2019t just a German story. At the very least, this is a European story, but it\u2019s really a story for all of us in the world. It\u2019s a story of somebody who stood up to power, who managed to speak his mind, express his opposition and speak for freedom, no matter what. And he did so not just in a brave manner, but also in a very humorous manner. <\/p>\n

\n\tIf I look at Trump, I think, \u201cWhere\u2019s Charlie Chaplin!?\u201d We should not be cowed. We should be making fun of these people, and that was Biermann\u2019s biggest secret weapon \u2013 he attacked the dictatorship that he lived under with passion and humor. It\u2019s an entertaining film \u2013 lots of laughter.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere is a scene in the film where Biermann goes back to East Germany after the fall of the wall and tells people that they didn\u2019t speak out against the GDR regime enough, which underlines that what he tells us can be quite uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, he\u2019s a real character. He gets a lot of resistance because he\u2019s abrasive and doesn\u2019t mince his words. He is \u2013\u00a0maybe that word is overused \u2013 authentic. It\u2019s the kind of authenticity that we badly, badly need these days. And in that sense, he\u2019s a secret weapon, and not just in Germany.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut what\u2019s interesting is that he touches both people of his and my generation, but also young people who may not have heard his name before, but he speaks to them even more. I think there\u2019s a thirst for that uprightness. His most famous song is called \u201cErmutigung,\u201d or \u201cEncouragement.\u201d I think it\u2019s what people are longing for and you get that with him, as you see in the film.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the film, we see a woman mention that people have sometimes called Biermann the \u201cBob Dylan of Germany\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n

\n\tThe quote you\u2019re referring to is really from the 1970s and from writer Barbara Honigmann, who said that for East Germans, he was their Bob Dylan. What she really means is that he was a figurehead; he was a leader in writing songs that spoke for people, that were original and that found words in a way that Bob Dylan did. They spoke to their generation; in Biermann\u2019s case, the generation of opposition to this gray, boring and really terrible Stalinist dictatorship that they were living under.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Biermann\u2019<\/p>\n

\n\tDid you and Biermann know each other before you started work on the film? And how long did you film him?<\/p>\n

\n\tNo, it was a bit of a blind date. Somebody arranged for us to meet who thought there had been no documentary about him since 1982. There have been lots of TV interviews, but not a documentary. And somebody thought maybe these two would get along. We were introduced and hit it off very quickly. It was amazing to discover how much life there is in this 90-year-old.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe also hit it off because my approach is different. I shoot on film, and I do not do that for retro reasons or because it looks better or something like that. It\u2019s the tool that I use to very respectfully, but very
respectfully intrusively, get into people\u2019s lives in a way so that we all enjoy the process. It\u2019s very above board because you can\u2019t hide a film camera, but it focuses everyone. That\u2019s something that Biermann really appreciated. So, we filmed over the course of two years, and that led to a lot of time spent together, with and without camera. You have to choose your moments, working on film.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat was the most difficult thing about making Biermann?<\/p>\n

\n\tThe hardest part is that this is a 90-year-old German whose life [covers] a German century. He\u2019s a Holocaust survivor who\u2019s still a public and political force today. He\u2019s currently on concert tour, filling large halls, for God\u2019s sake! He\u2019s somebody who\u2019s had an incredible lifespan as a musician and as a poet. Biermann is actually Germany\u2019s most published poet in the German language since World War II, and he\u2019s still writing songs now.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe\u2019s also on a concert tour, playing three-and-a-half-hour concerts this week. So, he\u2019s still top fit. He is just a really great pianist, but he\u2019s famous as a songwriter on the guitar. <\/p>\n

\n\tFor me, the film was also a discovery of his Jewish roots and of his communist roots all the way to the great role he played in changing German history with this expulsion from East Germany. He has lived in five Germanys. He grew up in Nazi Germany, lived in post-war occupied Germany, and then West Germany. He also moved to and lived in East Germany, and then [was sent back to West Germany] and now has been living in the reunited Germany. So one life, five Germanys. <\/p>\n

\n\tThere is no more German, European or world story in one person than his. If anyone thinks that this is just a German story, I think that\u2019s a huge misunderstanding. This is such a larger-than-life, true-life story, and it\u2019s such a universal message embodied in this extraordinary person.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Biermann\u2019 <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Majestic\/Sebastian Ganschow\/Bernd Fischer<\/p>\n

\n\tIs there any particular inspiration that you feel Biermann and the man it is about can provide?<\/p>\n

\n\tThe man is 90, and he\u2019s been through a lot, including having seen his father once in his life before he was murdered in Auschwitz. But he is still exuding a kind of optimism in spite of the shit show we are making our world into at the moment.<\/p>\n

\n\tSomething that I really want to capture in the documentaries I am making is this optimism. There\u2019s plenty of room for films that tell the stories of all the challenges and woes that we are facing. Weirdly enough, it seems that there isn\u2019t a big market for a film that also shows that maybe there is something positive in us, some agency. There\u2019s definitely something in Biermann that also gives us cause for confidence that we are able to stand up, that each of us is able to do something. Biermann has a great line: Get fucking involved in your own life and in your own matters.<\/p>\n

\n\tJust think of the David-versus-Goliath story of his life. He is a brilliant poet and songwriter but banned for 12 years. He couldn\u2019t perform or be published in his own country for 12 years. So, he just recorded secretly, and his music was smuggled out into the West. So he was banned in East Germany but a best-selling musician in the West. <\/p>\n

\n\tI think one great moment in the film is when he talks about his old apartment, and outside of it, there were all these trams, and they couldn\u2019t edit them out of the recordings. So he just embraced them and said, \u201cThose trams are my musicians.\u201d And in West Germany, when people listened to these records, they said, \u201cOh man, that\u2019s the great authentic sound of the East.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAre you working on a new project?<\/p>\n

\n\tI just started on a sequel of sorts to my film An Impossible Project. But this time around, it\u2019s a \u201cpossible\u201d project. It originates with the same [analogue enthusiast] character from Vienna, \u201cDoc\u201d [Florian Kaps], the guy who saved the last Polaroid factory in the world, against all odds.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe also got involved in saving vinyl, and he\u2019s recently teamed up, after years and years of not really getting it right, to invent a new kind of vinyl recording machine. He teamed up with a totally fascinating Swedish company called Teenage Engineering. Together, they want to fight back and conquer America in a good way with a different kind of approach to what technology can be, namely that technology can also empower us as people, and not just enslave us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Biermann, the new documentary film from Jens Meurer (An Impossible Project, Public Enemy, Seaside Special), is a portrait…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[146,85,399,46,397,294504,294505],"class_list":["post-654727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-international","tag-israel","tag-movies","tag-viennale","tag-wolf-biermann"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}